Edge of Battle

The shadow flitted across the hard-baked sand in an instant, so quickly that no one really noticed it. Eyes seared by the sun, stinging from sand, salt, and sweat, it was not hard to understand. Most eyes were concentrating on the path ahead, not on the sky. A false step could result in a twisted ankle or nasty fall, and that would delay everyone. Besides, shadows from birds flying overhead were common—usually the birds were buzzards or California condors, large carrion birds looking for animals in distress below for their afternoon meal. Humans were not on their preferred menu, but if one fell and looked as if it was dead or incapacitated, they would circle overhead and wait patiently until it died all the same.

This time, however, the shadow overhead was not from a living animal, although even from close-up it resembled a very large Canada goose. It moved slowly, no more than ten to fifteen knots depending on the winds, flying just five hundred feet above ground. It had very long thin wings with ducted turboprop engines underneath, a long neck, a large bulbous body that was not as long as the wingspan, and a broad flat tail.

The group of fifteen Mexicans crossing the desert stopped for a water and pee break, and it was then that one of the men noticed the shadow, looked up, and saw the flying object overhead. “What is it?” the man asked.

“Shh! ?Escuche!” the coyote leader ordered. Now they could hear the faint, low, throaty sound of the device’s small jet engine, and that made everyone in the group upset. “It is a reconnaissance aircraft, probably Border Patrol.”

“They will catch us for sure!”

“Maybe,” the leader said. He unslung his backpack and quickly pulled out a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun. “But they’ll have one less eye in the sky to bother us the next time we cross.” He found it child’s play to track the spy plane because it was moving so slowly, and he squeezed off a shot.

“You fool! They will hear you!” one of the other coyotes complained.

“We are twenty miles from the nearest road and thirty miles to the nearest town—no one will hear this small rifle,” the shooter said. He fired again, then reloaded.

“That little popgun isn’t going to hit it from this distance, you idiot!” one of the pollos shouted. But just then the little aircraft turned sharply to the north and started to fly away.

“Not going to hit it, eh?” the coyote said happily. “Too bad it got away—I really wanted to see that thing come spinning out of the sky, like a wounded duck,” he said gleefully. “Let’s get moving. The more distance we can put between us and this spot, the…”

“?Cual es ese?” one of the pollos suddenly exclaimed. The coyote looked in the direction of the migrant’s outstretched arm. There, at the top of a small rise about a hundred yards before them, was a…well, it was impossible to tell what it was. It resembled some sort of child’s toy robot, with broad chest and shoulders, bulbous head, slim waist, and large metallic arms and legs, but it was about nine or ten feet tall. It had appeared out of nowhere—none of the sparse vegetation for miles around could have possibly hidden that thing.

One of the pollos unslung his backpack and reached inside it, but another stopped him. “No, don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t you recognize it? I saw it on TV, back during the attacks on Houston and Washington. Usted no puede matarle.” The first man took his hand out of the backpack but kept it close.

“Whatever it is, let’s get away from it,” the coyote said. But as they moved a little farther east to try to get around it, the robot thing moved with them—it made no move to walk toward them, but simply shadowed their movements. “It’s moving with us, but it’s not making any attempt to stop us. Maybe it doesn’t belong to the Border Patrol?”

“?Que hacemos?” one of the migrants asked worriedly.

The coyote thought for a moment; then: “We split up,” he said. “There’s only one of it—it can’t follow us all. Up ahead about three kilometers is a gully. Follow the gully toward those mountains until you come to a concrete alcantarilla. Stay out of sight until we meet up with you.”

“What about our pickup?” one of the men asked. “You had better not call him off, asshole…!”

“We have a deal, dammit. Just do as I say. Now split up!” The pollos did as they were told, breaking up into two-and three-man teams and fanning out. The smuggler chambered a round in his rifle and approached the robot, shouting, “Hey, you! What are you? What do you want?”

“No tire en el avion,” the robot said in a machine-synthesized male voice.

That was bad—the spy plane was apparently beaming down its images to this contraption, because the robot knew that he had fired on it. “Fine, fine. I won’t fire on your spy plane anymore, prometo. Now leave us alone.”

“What is your name?” the robot asked in Spanish.

“Are you the police? Border Patrol?”

“No. But the Border Patrol is watching you. What is your name?”

“How do I know the Border Patrol is watching?” the coyote asked. “I don’t have to tell you shit.” He leveled the shotgun at the robot. “Now leave us alone, ojete!”

“That’s Martin Alvarez,” Senior Patrol Agent Albert Spinelli said, watching the video feed on a laptop computer broadcast via satellite from the Cybernetic Infantry Device unit on the scene. They were outdoors at a vacant area adjacent to Runway 27 Left at Gillespie Field near El Cajon, California, standing beside a Humvee with a small satellite dish on top. The entire area north of the parallel runways, including the runways themselves, had been closed off to all air traffic, and a small encampment had been set up with two Humvees, a satellite dish, and a large thirty-foot-long, ten-foot-high nylon net strung across Runway 27 Left to recover the Gullwing unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. “No surprise seeing him in this area.” Spinelli definitely appeared uncomfortable at watching this group of illegals crossing the border near Campo, California, just east of the steel security fence that stretched ten miles either side of the Potrero-Tecate border crossing station.

“The bastard took a shot at my UAV,” Dr. Ariadna Vega, deputy commander and chief engineer of Task Force TALON, a joint military–Federal Bureau of Investigation antiterrorist strike force, said in a surprised, worrisome voice. She too looked extremely uncomfortable watching this encounter, although for decidedly different reasons.

The Border Patrol agent looked at Vega suspiciously. “Alvarez is small time, usually nonviolent,” Spinelli said. “First time I’ve ever heard of him using a weapon. He’s usually too drunk or stoned to even walk straight, let alone shoot straight.”

“There’s something strange about those migrants,” Ariadna remarked.

“What?”

“They look…I don’t know, pretty well organized, like they’re used to walking out in the middle of nowhere in the desert,” Ari said.

“The migrant farmworkers are already pretty tough hombres to do the kind of work they do,” Spinelli said. “A lot of the migrants have made this trip dozens of times, and you have to be tough to survive it.” He looked at Vega again, trying to guess what was wrong with her expression. “Don’t worry—after the shootings at Blythe, we’ll be on guard for any violent characters.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Our patrol will be there in twenty minutes,” Spinelli replied. “We’ll pick them up, drive them back here, and give them all a checkup. We have a group of volunteer nurses and paramedics and a volunteer doctor on call who’ll help us out. Then they’ll be processed. We’ll identify them the best we can and weed out the criminals and the violent ones. Any wanted suspects are processed by the Departments of State and Justice for extradition. The Mexicans will be deported across the border; the OTMs—other than Mexicans—will be deported after a hearing. If they have any outstanding warrants, either in the U.S. or with any other Interpol reporting agencies, they’ll be detained until they can be transferred to the proper authorities. We’re seeing more and more of them with lengthy criminal records.”

“The others will get deported?”

“Yep. They’ll be bused across the border from San Diego to a Mexican processing center in Tijuana or Mexicali.” He thought for a moment, then went on: “Alvarez, the guy with the shotgun, concerns me. Smugglers with guns are getting more and more common on the border, and we want to clamp down on that hard and fast. I think Alverez is wanted in Tamaulipas State on suspicion of killing a Mexican federale. I